After the scrubbed launch attempts three months ago and some further problems Metop is now scheduled for liftoff at 16:28:13 UTC on 17-OCT-06 from the Baikonur Cosmodrome. After a daylight pass over North America and a circularization burn over Antarctica seperation between Metop and the Fregat upper stage should take place at 17:37 UTC. The following TLE set is valid from that moment: Metop Sep 1 99999 06099A 06290.73399421 0.00000000 00000-0 34635-4 0 1 2 99999 98.7320 348.2812 0001000 155.4951 132.7896 14.21435203 1 Half an hour after separation the Fregat stage is supposed to lower its perigee by about 100 km. Here is an approximate TLE set for searching the Fregat valid from 18:13 UTC (17-OCT-06): Fregat R/B 1 99999 06099B 06290.75917824 0.00000000 00000-0 11888-4 0 1 2 99999 98.7331 348.3063 0069368 236.4604 180.6236 14.35753113 1 Compared to three months ago the conditions for observing Metop are now very different. Mid-northern lattitudes are in their final days before the *winter blackout* while conditions on the southern hemisphere are now getting better from day to day. The biggest winners are high northern lattitudes which enjoy dark skies again after the bright summer nights with good visibilities of Metop (and satellites in similar orbits like Envisat). Correspondingly the Metop flares which I predicted will now be shifted to locations higher than 52 degrees latitude (if they actually do exist!). On its second orbit there might be a chance to observe flares from northwest Germany (19:55:47 UTC, 17-OCT-06, Osnabruck) and the Norwegian coast (19:58:05 UTC, Stavanger) but at that time only a coarse alignment attitude is flown so I would expect surprises. A day later (18-OCT-06) flares might be observed from locations close to Moscow, Berlin, Copenhagen and Oslo but it's a good idea to wait for the actual launch to take place before going into details about that. Gerhard HOLTKAMP Darmstadt, Germany ------------------------------------------------------------------------- Subscribe/Unsubscribe info, Frequently Asked Questions, SeeSat-L archive: http://www.satobs.org/seesat/seesatindex.html
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